//------------------------------// // Dust and Shadows // Story: Many Moons Ago // by GrapeVino //------------------------------// Luna’s eyes widened with terror. “Wh-…what?” “You’re just as powerful as me. Maybe marginally less powerful, but you could do it.” Celestia’s voice was cold. Luna’s heart skipped a beat. A second ago she was crying her eyes out, and now this. This was nothing like her. “It would be easy. And no one would have to question you. You could just say I had decided I liked controlling both the sun and the moon, and that I wanted you gone, wanted to get rid of you permanently this time. That it was for the greater good. And ‘poof’ off to the moon I go.” “T-T-T-Tia, I-“ “Why not? It’s a wonderful deal. Just exert some power and you’d be queen of everything for a thousand years, or even forever. I wouldn’t even have to come back. Then you could make it night as long as you wanted. Like you always wanted.” “You know I’m not like that now Tia!” “Go on! I’ll even play along We can give each other a few bruises, some black eyes, a cut or two, and make it look like there was a fight.” Celestia started pushing Luna. “Tia, please!” “Come on, show me! Show me what it was like on the moon. You won’t tell me, so let me experience it first hand!” Celestia’s pushing got harsher and Luna felt herself welling up. Celestia's pushing started to hurt, until one final strike and Luna slumped to the floor. “DO IT!” “I will NOT!” Luna turned her eyes to her sisters, tears streaming down her cheeks and shimmering in the moonlight. Celestia stopped as she saw Luna's tears. “I will n-not because I don't want to lose you again!” Celestia stood speechless. Luna could not hold it in any more. She choked in a last attempt to defy her sadness but ultimately gave in. In half a scream Luna let out a millennia of true despair and sadness as she began crying. Celestia stood frozen, her own tears rolling off her face and onto the ground. Luna almost writhed as she sobbed and drew ragged breaths, howling in despair. Eventually, Celestia moved closer to her sister, but did not have the courage to try to comfort her, not feeling she had the right to do so any more. Luna's breath steadied after some time, finally feeling like she had exhausted some of the sorrow she felt. She lay on the earthy ground looking with hollow eyes at her namesake. “... One. Thousand. Years... It was absolute agony.” her eyes did not shift focus. “It's not like being alone here. It's different. You notice the moment you're there... Everything was muffled. Dulled. Suffocated.” “What I think is the first few weeks I was there, the visage of Nightmare Moon still upon me, the only thoughts I had were of rage. I sent blasts of magic across the landscape, flying as best I could, my screams of rage filling the nothingness. In a way those were the times I was most sane.” Luna's eyes glazed over as she dove deeper into her memory. “Then, after the last of my anger had drained from me, that's when I heard it. Not silence... no. I had expected silence. I heard my own heartbeat” “The only thing that ever sounded... normal was my own heartbeat... It was maddening. Every beat hammered into my mind just how alone I was. How far away I was. How lost everything was. And every beat after that grew in volume until it became so deafening, so intense that my head felt like it was about to explode. I just grabbed my head and screamed for hours to hear something other than... Other than that horrid pounding, chipping away at my sanity every second.” Luna's voice grew more and more disturbed as she went on. “I can't remember how long I screamed for. I went until my voice broke. Until I could taste blood every time I yelled. Until my voice was no more than crackled, dry whispers.” Luna took a few second to calm herself before continuing. “When it was too painful to try drowning out the sound any more I lowered myself into a crater, and I lay within a pit of white dust. Motionless for what felt like months, I learnt to block out the sound of my own heart. That was when I truly lost any concept of time.” She stopped for a second, eyes lowering slightly. “Then, when I could no longer properly perceive myself, that was when the hallucinations started... It may have been seconds, it may have been hundreds of years, but for what felt like an eternity I ran from shadows I thought, no... Knew where going to kill me in the most painful ways imaginable. A few times I thought they had caught me, and unspeakable pain raked my very being. Every muscle and nerve within me was shredded and torn by unseen claws, but then I found myself running again.” “I think there was a point when I stopped, and waited. Waited for those shadowed abominations to come and kill me. I wanted them to. I didn't care how painful it would be. I sat and yearned for death, too much of a coward to do it myself. But they never came. I sat, looking to what I had once sought to conquer praying that you would relieve me of my immortality, so I could finally just suffocate and be left to drift within the vast emptiness of space surrounded by white powder and shining stars.” Luna could no longer look at the glowing prison in the sky, instead electing to cast her eyes to the soil at her feet before closing her eyes tightly and gritting her teeth choking back tears. Celestia knew she wasn't finished. She couldn't speak if she wanted to. Her throat felt like it was trying to crawl out of her neck, so tight it almost felt painful, tears now silently falling from her eyes. Luna managed to hold back from crying before continuing. “I-I'm n-not sure how... but seeing Equestria somehow brought me back. Back to who I was. I sat and stared at the greens, blues and whites. Watched as they faded to blacks and purples, with glimmers of light grey floating above it all in the night time. It reminded me of what I had wanted, I remembered you, sister, and how you had banished me. I threw myself to obsession. Only ever thinking of the past, and reliving the day we fought, the day I was banished. All I saw was Equestria, a land that you had denied me, and I sat and plotted day by day, my eyes fixated upon that distant sphere. Whenever it went out of sight, I ran desperately across the surface to try and see it again, and I found myself growing colder and colder, my feathers icing over and my muscles seizing as everything around me grew darker. I went as far as I could before I turned back. But every time it went out of my sight I flew to the other side and waited as far as I could into that cold shadow.” “Soon enough I felt myself assume the visage of Nightmare Moon once more, and my mind was focused. I was finally sane, but I was blinded by rage and ambition. I could see nothing more than the conquest of Equestria.” “And then the final hour came, and my elation was beyond what I could imagine. As the light of the stars closed in on me, I heard my heart racing so fast that I could've sworn it would burst forth from me...” Luna rubbed her eyes with her hoof. “... It was the most torturous thing... I have ever been through. And it would never have happened if I hadn't been filled with so much rage.” Luna tentatively opened her eyes, now bloodshot, and took another look at the moon before turning away with a pained expression. Celestia processed the last of what Luna had said, and ground her teeth as more tears flooded from her eyes. She finally felt Luna's story relinquish its hold on her, her knees shaking, then buckling. She fell to the ground in such emotional torment that she couldn't even muster the energy to scream or vocalise her pain. How? How could she have done this to her? She had never thought of the implications of that banishment. How could she be so cruel to sentence her to that. How could she call herself a Princess? The weight of every word Luna spoked crashed down on her again in its totality, and it was unimaginable. Luna turned as she heard her sister collapse. Seeing Celestia covering her head with her hooves her whole body occasionally heaving and twitching in an attempt to breath, scared to do so in case she may have to live any longer after what she had done. Luna seemed confused for an instant before a serene expression came over her. Celestia hardly even heard the hoofsteps, and flinched at Luna's touch. She knelt by her sisters side with her hoof on Celestia's back. “Tia...” “Get away from me! I don't deserve you!” Celestia kept her head and eyes hidden with her hooves. “Tia-” “No... I'm a monster. Not fit to rule, after putting my sister through such horrors!” “Ti-” “Just lea-” “Celestia! Be quiet for one moment will you!?” Luna raised her voice, but there was no anger to be found. Surprised by her tone, Celestia slowly peeked through her hooves to see Luna's face. Rather than a face of pity or fury, she saw Luna's eyes softly glimmering in the moonlight and a small smile playing upon her lips. Shocked, Celestia finally uncovered her face and reared her head up slightly, hooves now in front of her, so to look into Luna's eyes in disbelief. “Celestia. I can't hope to imagine what you feel right now, and you, and perhaps myself as well, can't hope to know what I felt while on the moon-” Celestia choked a little, as if to cry, but with a stern look from Luna settled for a sniffle. “-But there's one thing I do know, and I know you do too. It's what thing were once like before any of that. Before the fighting, and before even Discord, or even King Sombra.” Celestia brought her head a little higher, now only Glancing at Luna every now and then. “I remember that we used to be sisters, Tia... And I remember how we used to make each other laugh and smile.” Celestia's head fell, crestfallen. “Used to be,” conceded Celestia. “And still can be again, Tia.”